


Devil Never Saw the Likes of Us

by scioscribe



Category: Bound (1996)
Genre: Crimes & Criminals, F/F, Future Fic, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2020-12-27 18:41:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21123455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Corky and Violet didn't go looking for more trouble, but they're not exactly going to turn it down.





	Devil Never Saw the Likes of Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wonderluck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderluck/gifts).

“I don’t understand it,” Violet said. “All the money in the world, and you still want to work for a living.”

She tugged down the zipper of Corky’s coveralls, just enough so that the grease-streaked gray cotton parted to show the ribbed white undershirt beneath, to show a narrow bronzed triangle of Corky’s skin; Corky had callused hands that Violet liked to feel slip over her, slip inside her, snagging against her like she was made out of silk, but here Corky was just as soft as she was. Violet dipped one finger between Corky's breasts, sliding a dark red fingernail against that smooth skin. The only snag there was Corky’s breath.

Violet liked knowing that she had that effect on women. On this woman—her woman—in particular.

“I told you. It doesn’t feel so much like work when you own the place.”

“That’s true. You did tell me that.” She inched the zipper down lower. “That means you’re your own boss. I’ve never known anyone who was really her own boss before.”

“Yeah, well, now there’s us. Both of us.”

“Mm. Only I can still get my kicks from retirement.”

Corky was touching her back now, unashamed of ruining Violet’s dress with the oil-stains on her hands; Corky knew how much Violet liked having throwaway possessions, never having to save up some beauty for a rainy day. She gasped as Corky’s hands went to her hips, pulling her close. It was like the whole garage was going up around them in some blazing inferno, and here she was, the sweet blue heart of the flame. Hotter than anything. Corky got her like that.

The garage they’d bought together was small, and to Violet, it still had the whiff of pine air fresheners and wiper fluid and men’s sweat. But she’d put up with all of that to see Corky in her element, all long hard muscles and knowing hands. The place would be cheap at three times the price.

It still wasn’t really open, though. Right now, Corky was only working on old junkers she’d bought for what amounted to nickels and dimes. This one had peeling paint the color of red wine.

Violet lay back against the hood, opening her legs as Corky pushed her dress up her thighs.

“Stockings,” Corky said. “I love you in these.” She cupped her hand around the back of one of Violet’s calves and stroked upwards, her thumb against the seam, and every inch her touch traveled was like some kind of lever knocking Violet’s legs further apart.

God, she wanted Corky so bad it could make her fall to pieces.

“I wish I knew what you were wearing,” Violet said. “Underneath that zip-up with your name stitched on it.” She pressed her toes against Corky’s hip, pushing against her. “I know your name. I want to see everything else.”

“You know everything else by now too.”

“Never so well as I’d like.”

Corky grinned. “You know the way to a woman’s heart.” She unzipped the coverall the rest of the way, letting it fall to the grimy cement floor; she stepped out of it and let Violet undress her the rest of the way, fiddling with the little brass button on her jeans, sucking at the damp spot on her underwear before she slid them off.

That was Friday, July 13, the hottest day of the year in the little town in New Hampshire where they were pretending they didn’t have any histories, like they’d been freshly unboxed at the state line and still had that new girl smell to them. Friday, July 13, and the only thing on fire was them.

By next Monday night, they’d torched a hell of a lot more.

***

It started right on their doorstep. Violet got out of bed Saturday morning and tugged a silk bathrobe up over her shoulders.

It was new. Almost everything she had with her had been bought since they’d left the city, but this was so new she’d had to snap the tags off it before she pulled it on. It had this swirly peacock pattern on it, like streaks of paint, and paint felt sort of like their lucky charm.

She wasn’t much of a cook, but she could add water to a mix like anybody else, and she decided to make blueberry muffins. She liked the little pastel-and-foil cups you put them in to bake: everything had its own little splotch of color. The old apartment had been nothing but black and white and steel, lifeless and cold. This place—their place—was different.

She was just sliding the tray in the oven when she heard the knock.

And bam, just like that, she was back where she’d started, feeling like a bolt of that steel had just gone straight through her stomach. They didn’t get visitors. It was still practically a honeymoon; they didn’t need other people yet. They hadn’t made any friends here.

Corky came out of the bedroom. The pillow had spiked her hair up one side, and usually Violet liked that sleep-rumpled look she had in the mornings, but now it was only half there: her eyes were too sharp. “Door?” she mouthed, and Violet nodded.

“I’ll get it,” she whispered. Most of the people who would be looking for them—the ones who could be trouble—would be looking for her, not Corky. They wouldn’t know what to make of Corky opening the door. Right now, they had her in one hand and everything that had happened last year in the other, and the two didn’t feel like they mixed. Finding Corky with her could tell them what'd served as the cocktail shaker.

A couple more knocks. Not a delivery, then, or a kid selling subscriptions or Girl Scout cookies. Not with that kind of persistence.

Corky held up one finger and disappeared back into the bedroom. She moved silently when she wanted to, like her feet never even touched the ground. She came back with a pearl-handled derringer they had bought on the road almost as a joke; it wouldn’t leave much of a hole from anything but the closest shot, but it wouldn’t bulge in her robe pocket, either. Not too much.

Violet took it and slid it in, angling the robe itself so it hung right to disguise the shape. She gestured Corky back out of sight.

She opened the door.

“I was starting to think you were ignoring me.”

Violet didn’t recognize him except as a type. But goddamn, he was a familiar type, with gone-to-seed old jock muscles and a grin on his face that said he thought he was the hottest shit around. The kind of man who told you off before he even introduced himself.

She liked the slight weight of the derringer at her side. She couldn’t afford to rush into being difficult, but if she didn’t know him, she might at least be able to afford to think about it. She smiled. “I was making breakfast. I had muffin batter all over my hands. Can I help you with something?”

“I saw your truck out front. I’ve seen it around in front of old Mack’s garage, too.”

“Sure,” Violet agreed. She kept her voice soft and sweet, like she’d stirred a whole bunch of whipped cream into it, like she could pile it on him like clouds. “Are you a friend of Mickey’s?”

“Mickey like the Mouse? No. I’m a friend to a lot of people, sweetheart, because a lot of people want my friendship.” He smacked his lips as he looked across her porch, staring at Corky’s truck. “It’s a nice truck. And Mack’s always did good business. Brought in good money. You need insurance with a good up-and-coming business like that, one coming in under new management. And you—you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d know what to do with cars. You could maybe use a little extra help, and I know the right kind of guys you should talk to. Good guys.”

Oh my God. It was a shakedown. Some small town New Hampshire muscle was trying to squeeze her and Corky for some action on the garage, like the two of them hadn’t been up to their ears already with Caesar and Johnnie and Mickey. Now that Violet understood what he was, looking at him was like looking at a little boy playing dress-up. Violet had to bite down on the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

Corky came into view, walking with a strut that made Violet’s skin seem to tighten and throb. “We’re not interested. And we have all the insurance we need.”

The guy’s eyes flickered back and forth between them, like they were two parts of a math problem that didn’t add up. He was like Caesar, walking in on them and missing what was right in front of his eyes. “And who the hell are you?”

“I live here,” Corky said. “And you’re on our porch. I think it’s about time you were somewhere else.”

“Lady, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.” He looked at them again, ping-ponging around, and then it finally clicked. “It’s like that, huh? You two are—hey, that’s no problem. I help everybody out, no questions asked.”

“We don’t need your help,” Violet said.

“I’m Eddie Redd.” He stressed the words. “I own Redd’s Tavern. I own this whole goddamn _town_.”

“Nice to meet you, Eddie Redd,” Violet said, closing the door. “Have a nice day.”

She would wonder, later, if she’d sounded like that on purpose, made the words have that shimmy of silk over silk; maybe some part of her liked seducing men into danger. At least if they’d tried to get her there first. She was fair. She hadn’t done anything to Caesar that he wouldn’t have done to her.

If Eddie Redd took her smoothly ordering him away from her door as an excuse to try to fuck her over, well. She hadn’t asked him to. She hadn’t forced anybody’s hand.

She went back into the kitchen to check on the muffins. Their tops were turning a faint golden hue, puffing up in their little cups.

Corky followed along after her and dragged one finger along the inside of the mixing bowl. She licked muffin batter off it, starting to smile while her lips were still wrapped around her finger. “Typical small town bullshit. I’ve had enough of that to last me a lifetime.”

“Yeah. If I’m going to be talking to gangsters, I want them to have a proper outfit behind them. Know how to wear a suit and tie. The difference is—mm,” she said, as Corky went behind her and kissed her neck. “The difference between Mickey and Eddie Redd is like butter to margarine.” She felt Corky’s hips press against her ass, and she arched her head back, letting—begging, really—Corky to taste more of her skin.

“He’ll try something,” Corky said, her lips brushing Violet’s throat. “Sooner or later. Probably sooner.”

“Do you mind?”

“Fuck no.” Corky’s teeth, bared in a grin, were slick against her. “I get bored too easily. I mean, I’m not going to go looking for trouble. But if trouble finds us, well. I don’t see why we shouldn’t take care of it.”

“You’re good at taking care of things, Corky.” She ground backwards and felt Corky’s hand insinuate itself between her legs, sliding between the folds of her bathrobe.

“I’ve got a good partner.”

The smell of the muffins warmed the air. Violet gripped the edge of the counter.

She could get dizzy, sometimes, thinking about how strange it was to have everything she’d ever wanted.

***

Eddie Redd didn’t wait very long before he made his move, but then, Violet had known just by looking at him that he was impatient. Impatient and stupid. That was a bad combination.

Not to mention bad judgment. He went after Corky’s truck, and he would have done himself more of a favor by going after the garage or even the house; that truck was the first prize of their new life. Corky talked to it sometimes like it was a dog. It wasn’t the money, it was the _sentiment_.

And Eddie Redd had busted out its windows, smashed in the hood, and broken taillights and headlights both. Sugar in the gas tank. None of it was even especially original, and the sugar in the gas tank, Corky said, didn’t really do shit except make her have to clean the filter.

Violet stood there smoking smoking a cigarette while she watched Corky circle the truck, figuring out what could be salvaged; the nicotine seemed to snake through her bloodstream, making her flush, making the sun feel extra hot and sticky on her bare arms and shoulders. The truck wasn’t totaled, but Eddie must have figured it would be—he’d bought into that old story about sugar in the gas tank ruining the engine. So it wasn’t a nothing kind of strike, not really. Just a childish one, like a kid throwing a tantrum and trying to smash someone’s toy.

Sunburn was prickling at her shoulders. She said, “He shouldn’t have told us where he does business,” and she dropped her cigarette and crushed it beneath her shoe.

Corky looked up from a dent she was inspecting, and a slow smile spread across her face. “No, he shouldn’t have. And I guess I’m not the only one who gets bored.”

“No. You said it yourself—we’re pretty much the same everywhere it counts.”

“So what do you want to do?” Corky leaned back against the truck.

“I guess I did let you do all the hard work last time,” Violet said. “Coming up with the plan. It’s only fair for us to take turns.” She scratched at her shoulder, her fingers unnaturally cool against her hot skin. The thing about freedom was it made you reckless. Reckless and restless—and that was maybe just as bad a combo as the one Eddie was working with. But she had been a lot of people all over the years, and she’d never liked any of them the way she’d liked who she was with Corky in those days when the scheme hung in the air between them like static electricity, sparking up wherever they touched.

And maybe if what she’d wanted all along was safety, she wouldn’t have looked for it with Corky.

Anyway, the sunburn gave her the firebug idea, and she liked that too much to resist it.

It was no trouble at all, burning Redd’s Tavern to the ground. Oh, they waited until it was one of those gray in-between hours of the morning, too close to dawn for the barflies and too close to night for the early risers; they didn’t want any more blood on their hands. (Least of all a roast.) Good, honest property damage, Corky said, and between the two of them, between what Corky had learned in the joint and what Violet had picked up from the outfit, they knew how to cover their tracks. Eddie Redd would know what they’d done. But nobody could prove it.

And with all those bottles of smuggled Canadian whiskey and fake-label Pappy and watered-down booze lying around, the place went up like an inferno. Violet didn’t know that the devil himself had ever seen flames that looked like that.

It was a shame they couldn’t stay and watch.

***

At home, they showered together, touching each other through a haze of steam, soaping the smell of smoke from their hair. She stood facing Corky, her fingers light against the hard plane of Corky’s stomach and then soft and steady against the dark curls between Corky’s legs. The water had slicked her smooth, licking every bit of her out straight. Violet could never get enough of looking at her in all the different ways the world had to offer.

The Ivory soapsuds lay over Violet’s arms and breasts, filmy lace like a wedding dress. She went down on her knees, like a proposal, and licked up between Corky’s folds, where the clean soap-and-water taste of her skin gave way to the real, addictive tang of her body. She felt the water beating down on her shoulders, harsh against her sunburn; felt Corky’s hands clenching in her hair.

Afterwards, lying in bed and looking spotless and innocent, Violet said, “When we get Eddie out of the way—once he knows he can’t walk all over us—I think this place could really start feeling like home.”

Corky was still naked, her nipples dark rose peaks, her body slowly drying as the ceiling fan wicked the lingering drops of water down to the sheets. “If you’re just saying that because of the garage, don’t. I can get another one someplace else. This one might be toast anyway, depending on what Eddie decides to do next.”

“I’m not thinking about the garage. I like it, though. I think I get what you were saying about it.” She turned over on her side and put her head in the crux of Corky’s shoulder. “That’s how I feel about the town now, you know.”

Corky wound a strand of Violet’s hair around one finger. “Yeah?”

“Like it’s different,” Violet said, “when you own the place.”

Corky laughed, low and rough, and put an arm around her. “You’re trouble, Violet.”

“So are you.”

“My whole life.” She traced a line down Violet’s spine, her hand eventually cupping Violet’s ass. “But I never had as much fun with it before I met you.” She squeezed briefly and then let go. “Sure, I like that. Welcome home.”


End file.
